Sarah Anagnostou graduated from the University of Minnesota with a B.A. in individualized studies, an interdisciplinary degree focusing on teaching English as a foreign language, global studies and French. She is certified to teach English as a second language and is an avid student of yoga. Her research interests include the impact of cross-cultural appropriation and colonialism on healing traditions, psychogeography and creative reappropriations of urban space for community enrichment. She is interested in how people interact with rapid urban development, reclaim abandoned spaces, and create community through food and healing traditions. Her other interests include traveling, camping, holistic and herbal medicine, creative writing, sustainable agriculture and architecture, analog photography, and studying foreign languages.

Ms. Anagnostou’s Fulbright research project, “A Comparative Analysis of Indian and Western Yogic Practice and Healing Traditions,” consists of a personal comparative analysis of the healing traditions of India with those of Western culture, particularly the U.S. Its main focus is the ancient Indian practice of yoga, whose popularity has recently spiked in the U.S. Yogic practice has undergone dramatic mutation in its migration from India throughout the world. This research explores the contrast between the two cultures’ healing and yogic practices, as well as the elements they share. The research will culminate in a narrative piece of creative nonfiction, which will question how Indian and Western worldviews and notions of “self” relate to their respective approaches to yoga, wellness and personal healing.